Word: questioners
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Dates: during 1920-1929
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...central and eastern Europe the frontiers of nationality are not clearly defined geographically. This is a point that must be kept constantly in mind in discussing the question of racial minorities, one of the most dangerous questions in European politics of the present day and quite as menacing to the cause of peace as the reparations problem or the problem of disarmament. Just because of the fact that the European nationalities merge gradually into one another, and because of the fact that there are, in various localities of eastern Europe, isolated racial islands embedded in the larger national blocks...
...driven out of Europe. In the peace settlements of 1919 the principle of national self-determination was applied in an imperfect way to the problem of territorial readjustment. In view of the vagueness of national frontiers a settlement of entirely satisfactory character was out of the question. Clearly defined national frontiers could have been established only if the principle of deportation or exchange of populations had been applied. The idea is, in a theoretical, way, an excellent one, but its application is of necessity so harsh, amounting practically to the eradication of peoples long resident in certain localities, that...
...great weakness of the peace settlement was not that it had not solved this question, but that it had not followed the principle of self-determination as far as possible. In the desire to weaken the defeated central powers and to strengthen the smaller or newly-created succession states considerations of strategy, of communications and of geography were allowed to play into the settlement of the frontiers, with the result that since the war there have been more submerged minorities and more irredentas than before. Add to this the fact that these minorities have become nationally more and more conscious...
...convinced that there is little to be hoped for from the secret pourparlers of the leading statesmen. In 1926 Germany was admitted to the League and given a seat on the Council, and it was expected by the German minorities that Germany would take the lead and press the question. Germany has, in fact, come to be looked upon as the champion of the oppressed nationalities because a revision of the peace treaties is in her own interest...
...what has happened during the past week at the Council meeting at Geneva would indicate that too great hopes are not justified. Stresemann, the German foreign minister, was obliged by pressure at home to put the question on the agenda, but it was clear from the beginning that he was anxious to avoid raising the question in a larger way, in order not to compromise the reparations negotiations which are in progress. The Poles, knowing that the Germans would not be willing to have the question become acute, have been pressing for action, in the hope that the whole problem...